Frequently, in the production of plastic hollow bodies, a method is used in which preforms are first heated, and then shaped. A particular domain of application of this technique is, for example, the production of foodstuffs containers, in particular plastic bottles, which are produced from preforms. For this purpose, these preforms are heated, and subsequently subjected to final shaping, to form containers. The heating operation is usually performed using infrared radiation or near-infrared radiation. A disadvantage of these heating devices with infrared is that the efficiency of the heating operations is only very low, at approximately 20%.
It is therefore the object of the invention to create a method, a device and an arrangement by means of which it is possible to heat plastic preforms in an energy-saving manner.